Who I Am

A Memoir

About the Book

From the voice of a generation:

...smashed his first guitar onstage, in 1964, by accident....heard the voice of God on a vibrating bed in rural Illinois....invented the Marshall stack, feedback, and the concept album....stole his windmill guitar-playing from Keith Richards....detached from his body in an airplane, on LSD, and nearly died....has some explaining to do....is the most literary and literate musician of the last fifty years....planned to write his memoir when he was 21....published this book at 67.

One of rock music's most intelligent and literary performers, Pete Townshend—guitarist, songwriter, editor—tells his closest-held stories about the origins of the preeminent twentieth-century band The Who, his own career as an artist and performer, and his restless life in and out of the public eye in this candid autobiography, Who I Am.

With eloquence, fierce intelligence, and brutal honesty, Pete Townshend has written a deeply personal book that also stands as a primary source for popular music's greatest epoch. Readers will be confronted by a man laying bare who he is, an artist who has asked for nearly sixty years: Who are you?

Educator and Librarian Resources

Critical Praise

“Intensely intimate…candid to the point of self-laceration…[Townshend’s] tone is less lofty than anyone would have expected, just as this book is more honest than any fan would have hoped.” —Rolling Stone (Four 1/2 Stars!)

“Mr. Townshend’s self-portrait is raw and unsparing...as intimate and as painful as a therapy session, while chronicling the history of the band as it took shape in the Mod scene in 1960s London and became the very embodiment of adolescent rebellion and loud, anarchic rock ‘n’ roll.” —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“Unusually frank and moving…[Who I Am] isn’t one of those rock memoirs that puts the what before the why. His past is a puzzle Mr. Townshend is sweating to decipher.” —The Guardian (UK)

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